What if all summits were transparent…

What if they held a summit and nobody cared? That may be a bit harsh, but it’s not too far off the mark as a description of press coverage of last week’s European Council. Mostly bottom-of-the-fold, or even buried on page A6.

Has Europe Fatigue settled in for good? Perhaps not yet, but at least we’ll have another year to reflect on the question. Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung is at least supportive of European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, who pleads the case for a “Europe of results”. The paper is tired of Brussels blaming national capitals and the media for its failures, and the national capitals blaming Brussels.

“Too often they use Brussels as a scapegoat in order to divert attention from their own mistakes,” it writes.

Austria’s Der Standard offers this bit of hand-wringing: “It is not the [EU] constitution which is the problem but its presentation.” The Commission, it says, has yet to explain “in the language of normal people” how consumers benefit from the single market. Perhaps a TV spot featuring Wayne Rooney, Ségolene Royal and a talking bunny would do the trick…

Germany’s Die Welt has a clever take: perhaps none of this matters. “The last 12 months have shown that Europe can live without a constitution,” it argues. The real problems facing Europe are its economic performance, changing demographics, failure to integrate immigrants and a scattershot foreign policy.

But Belgium’s De Standaard thinks the constitution is crucial. “Without the charter, or something which very much resembles it, a union of 25 member states cannot work.”

Then there is this week’s summit meeting between the EU and the US. President George W. Bush was in Vienna for talks with EU representatives. Most media focus on the need to patch-up relations.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says both sides are in a weakened position of late. The EU “lacks orientation” and has “no shared analysis of what the rejection of the constitutional treaty in France and the Netherlands really means”; the US has “failed to achieve” its foreign policy objectives in Iraq.

Le Monde, however, sees improvement in transatlantic relations. “The main points of disagreement…following the diplomatic breakdown in 2003 over Iraq have either been resolved or brushed under the carpet,” it says, “with the exception of Guantánamo prison” . (And, er, airline passenger data and capital punishment and farm subsidies and…)

Die Presse has a novel approach: defending Bush against rampant anti-Americanism, which it says is rife in Austria.

“Hatred of the US has…gripped the mainstream,” the Austrian paper writes, even though Bush has “noticeably moderated his foreign policy in his second term in office”.

It claims critics of the US would not change their minds “even if Bush turns the White House into an ashram and chants peace mantras”.